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How a Techno Party is Making Tbilisi a Rave Destination

Summary/Commentary:

In this Electronic Beats feature, co-owners Zviad Gelbakhiani an Tato Getia take us inside Bassiani, a club and the epicenter of Tbilisi, Georgia's flourishing techno scene. Zviad and Tato detail to the measures they must take to keep the club a safe place to rave amidst tyrannical drug laws and deep-seeded homophobia.

After 25 years of conflict, Georgia has achieved a state of relative stability, and the benefits are nowhere stronger than in the capital. In Tbilisi, a young but clued-in techno scene is flourishing, and at the center of it all is BASSIANI, a club in a decades-old Soviet-era athletic arena. Though it was created less than two years ago, it's already spoken of in the same breath as many of the world's long-established clubbing institutions. But not everything is rosy in Tbilisi. Here, club co-owners Zviad Gelbakhiani and Tato Getia explain the lengths the club must go to to provide a safe all-night experience amidst tragically oppressive drug laws and culturally entrenched homophobia.

The techno scene in Georgia is still very young. Though we’ve had tech house and minimal scenes in the past, the techno scene as it exists now only came about in 2013. When thinking about partying in Georgia, it’s important to remember that we have faced four wars in the past 25 years. The scene here is different from London and the European capitals. The reason it feels like the early ’90s here is because we’ve gone through times of war when there was no time for partying. Previous generations only had guns and heroin. The new generation is up for this—up for raving. Our generation is young: all 20 to 30-year-olds...